"Robert F. Young - The Worlds of Robert F. Young" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

"Never mind a lunch. Just pick me up at two." She kissed him so hard that his toes turned up. "Good
night, Roger."
"See you tomorrow at two," he said when his breath came back.
 "Maybe I'll ask you in for a cocktail."
His feet never touched the ground once all the way back to the hotel. He came back down to earth
with a jar, though, when he read the letter the night clerk handed him. The wording was different from
that of the five others he had received in answer to his five other applications, but the essential message
was the same: "Don't call us, we'll call you."
He went upstairs sadly and undressed and got into bed. After five failures in a row he should have
known better than to tell the sixth interviewer about his poetic analysis of science. Modem industrial
corporations wanted men with hard unadorned facts in their heads, not frustrated poets seeking
symmetry in the microcosm. But, as usual, his enthusiasm had carried him away.
It was a long time before he fell asleep. When he finally did so he dreamed a long and involved
dream about a girl in an Alice-blue gown, a wolf in a Brooks Brothers suit and a siren in a black sheath.
True to her word, Alayne of Altair was sitting on the bench when he came down the walk the next
morning. "Hi, Rog," she said brightly.
He sat glumly down beside her. "How was Ashley's first edition?'
"I didn't see it yet. Last night after we had dinner I was so tired I told him to take me straight home.
He's going to show it to me tonight. We're going to dine by candlelight in his apartment." She hesitated
for a momentтАФthen, with a rush: "She's not the one for you, Rog. Becky, I mean.тАЭ
He sat up straight on the bench. "What makes you think so?"
"IтАФI tracked you last night on my fleglinder. It's a little TV receiver that you beam in on whoever you
want to see and hear. LastтАФlast night I beamed it in on you and Becky."
"You followed us, you mean! Why, you snooping littleтАФ"
"Please don't get mad at me, Roger. I was worried about you. Oh, Rog, you've fallen into the
clutches of a witch-woman from Muggenwort!"
It was too much. He stood up to leave, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him back down again.
"Now you listen to me, Rog," she went on. "This is serious. I don't know what she told you about me, but
whatever it was, it's a lie. Girls from Muggenwort are mean and cruel and crafty and will do anything to
further their evil ends. They come to Earth in spaceships just as we girls from Buzenborg doтАФonly their
spaceships are big enough to hold five people instead of only twoтАФthen they take an assumed name, get
a job where they'll come into contact with lots of men and start filling their quota of four husbandsтАФ"
"Are you sitting there in broad daylight trying to tell me that the girl IтАЩm going to marry is a witch from
Muggenwort who came to Earth to collect four husbands?"
"YesтАФto collect them and take them back to Muggenwort with her. You see, Muggenwort is a small
matriarchal province near the Altair VI equator, and their mating customs are as different from ours as
they are from yours. All Muggenwort women have to have four husbands in order to be accepted into
Muggenwort society, and as there are no longer enough men in Muggenwort to go around, they have to
travel to other planets to get them. But that's not the worst of it. After they capture them and bring them
back to Muggenwort, they put them to work twelve hours a day in the kritch fields while they lie around
all day in their air-conditioned barkenwood huts chewing rutenstuga nuts and watching TV!"
Roger was more amused than angry now. "And how about the husbands? I suppose they take to all
this docilely and don't mind in the least sharing their wife with three other men!"
"But you don't understand!" Alayne of Altair was becoming more agitated by the second. "The
husbands have no choice. They're bewitchedтАФthe same way Becky is bewitching you. Do you think it
was your idea to ask her to marry you? Well, it wasn't! It was her idea, planted in your mind by
hypnosis. Didn't you notice those gleaming gray eyes of hers? She's a witch, Roger, and once she gets
you completely in her clutches you will be her slave for life, and she must be pretty sure of you already or
she wouldn't be taking you out to her spaceship this afternoon!"
"What about her other three husbands-to-be? Are they going to accompany us on our drive into the